IOC welcomes AIBA investigation

Friday 23 September 2011 10:49 BST

Boxing gloves

The International Olympics Committee has urged the BBC to hand over any further evidence it may have regarding allegations that large amounts of money were paid out in an attempt to ensure boxers from Azerbaijan received gold medals at the 2012 Olympics.

The International Amateur Boxing Association has launched an investigation after the claims were made on Thursday night's Newsnight programme, which found payments of millions of dollars from an Azeri national to the AIBA's World Series of Boxing competition. The money was allegedly in return for guaranteed Azeri gold medals at the Games.

"We welcome AIBA's announcement of an immediate enquiry into these claims and we await the outcome of their investigation," said an IOC statement.

"For its part the IOC takes all allegations of corruption very seriously. And we would urge the BBC to make any evidence they have available to AIBA and to our Ethics Commission which will then determine if further action is necessary.

"We would also note that the judging process in boxing as in other sports at the Games are transparent and open to public scrutiny - and a number of sports including boxing have made significant changes to their procedures in recent years to deal with any potential issues."

The allegations come with the World Championships - which double as the first Olympic qualifiers - due to begin this weekend in Baku. They were moved to the Azeri capital from their original choice of Busan, South Korea, last year.

The allegations, from an unnamed insider, relate to the financial affairs of the World Series of Boxing, a full-time, salaried tournament inaugurated by AIBA last year - ostensibly to make it more attractive to fighters to stay in the amateur ranks.

Allegations of corruption relating to Olympic boxing are nothing new. The most notorious incident related to Roy Jones' light-middleweight final against South Korea's Park Si-Hun in Seoul in 1988.

Despite out-landing his opponent 86-32 on the punch statistics, Jones lost the verdict on a 3-2 split among the five judges. All three judges who ruled in favour of the South Korean were subsequently suspended.